Persistent yet ameliorable shocks to female entrepreneurship: Experimental evidence from Kenya
Journal of Development Economics · 2025 · Francisco Campos、Maria Hernandez、Julian Jamison、Abla Safir、Bilal Zia
中文摘要
尽管女性创业者面临多重障碍，但经济危机期间性别差距是否会扩大尚不清楚：由于这些障碍，女性，尤其是已婚女性，受到的影响可能大于男性；但由于女性集中于特定行业，或者危机使所有人受到同等冲击，她们所面临的风险也可能较低。利用恰好在新冠疫情前收集基线数据这一独特时机，我们考察了危机发生两年后，随机发放补助和提供商业培训对有伴侣的女性和男性微型创业者的影响。我们发现，女性受到疫情的冲击更为严重，但补助显著缓解了危机对企业所有权、销售额、利润、收入和福祉的影响。就影响渠道而言，补助增加了女性的劳动供给，但以减少家务劳动、闲暇时间和照料儿童的时数为代价；而对于男性，其时间则从工资性就业重新配置到自己的经营业务中。
Abstract
While female entrepreneurs face multiple obstacles, it is unclear whether gender gaps worsen during economic crises: women, especially married women, may be more affected than men due to these obstacles, but could also be less exposed due to their specialized sectors, or if a crisis flattens everyone together. Leveraging on a unique timing of collecting baseline data just before COVID-19, we examine the impact of randomized grants and business training of partnered female and male microentrepreneurs two years after the crisis. We find that women were more severely impacted by the pandemic, but that the grants significantly helped mitigate the crisis impacts on business ownership, sales, profits, income, and well-being. In terms of channels of impact, the grants increased women's labor supply, at the expense of domestic work, leisure time, and childcare hours, while, for men, time is reallocated from wage employment to their business.